Many oil and gas downhole recovery operations, especially high-rate, high-permeability completions, produce reservoir fluids that contain fines, or formation sand. Therefore, support and screening devices, such as screens, slotted liners, and the like, have been utilized to support a gravel pack, or the like, in the well to stabilize the formation while permitting the recovered fluids to pass from the formation into the wellbore yet preventing passage of any fines or formation sand with the recovered fluids.
These support devices and gravel packs are often placed in a pressure-drop zone which subjects them to contamination from scaling (salt crystal growth), mud cake, mud filtrate, fines in the formation wall, and other materials (hereinafter alone and collectively referred to as “blockage”) that form on the support devices, the gravel packs, and/or on the wall of the wellbore adjacent the formation during production of the reservoir fluids. The build up of blockage in this manner can reduce and even block the flow of the reservoir fluids in the wellbore and can pose serious problems for sustaining well production.
To combat these problems various types of cleaning tools have been developed to clean the blockage. For example, relatively high-power sonic cleaners are used that include a vibrating component that causes the blockage to dislodge from the screens, gravel packs and wellbore wall.
However, it is very important for the operator of these cleaning devices to be able to timely monitor the effectiveness of the cleaning tool to permit better control of the cleaning treatments and, in addition, to permit analysis and quantification of the well productions. Prior art downhole monitoring, or measuring, techniques mainly use fluid mechanics (fluid pressure drop, spinners, turbines, etc), electromagnetics (capacitance or resistance), or acoustics (ultrasonic Doppler, etc.), all of which have certain disadvantages, including, for example, the inability to determine where the downhole production fluid flow originates and how much the flow is enhanced due to stimulation. Also some of these techniques require separate deployment of test equipment that is costly in terms of rig time.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for monitoring the build-up of blockage, for removing the blockage, and for measuring the effectiveness of the removal process, while eliminating the disadvantages of the prior art.